Tennessee votes to leave the Union; the eleventh state is also the last
When Confederate guns opened on Fort Sumter in April 1861, Tennessee was still in the Union — and a majority of its voters had just rejected a secession convention two months earlier. Lincoln's call for 75,000 militiamen to suppress the rebellion changed that calculus overnight, and on June 8, 1861, Tennesseans voted in a referendum to leave the United States. Middle Tennessee swung from 51 percent against secession in February to 88 percent in favor, providing the decisive margin. Tennessee became the eleventh and last state to formally withdraw from the Union — though East Tennessee, where Unionist sentiment ran deep, never accepted the outcome.
Tennessee supplied the second-largest number of troops to the Confederacy — and more Unionist soldiers to the Union Army than any other Confederate state. Andrew Johnson, an East Tennessean, was installed as the state's military governor after Nashville fell in 1862, and Lincoln later chose him to balance the 1864 ticket. Two years after seceding, Tennessee found itself the proving ground for Grant, Sherman, and the military strategy that would end the war.
QHow did a single month change Tennessee's vote on secession from 51% against to 88% in favor?
The February 1861 vote against a secession convention reflected a state that still believed in compromise — East Tennessee was strongly Unionist, and even Middle Tennessee was uncertain. Then came Fort Sumter on April 12 and Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops on April 15. Lincoln's proclamation was widely read across the South as a declaration of war against Southern states, not just the Confederacy. In Middle Tennessee, where slavery was more economically central than in the mountains, the shift was seismic: a 51-percent anti-secession majority in February became an 88-percent pro-secession majority in June. The state's political geography had not changed. The question had.
QWhat happened to the East Tennesseans who voted against secession and kept organizing?
After the June 8 referendum, Confederate authorities moved swiftly. East Tennessee Unionists had burned railroad bridges and cut telegraph lines to disrupt Confederate supply routes and signal their resistance. The Confederate response was to send troops under General Felix Zollicoffer to occupy the region. More than 3,000 men suspected of Union loyalty were arrested and held without trial. The region remained under Confederate control from 1861 to 1863, even as its residents supplied soldiers to the Federal army and conducted guerrilla operations against the Confederate occupiers. Union forces finally took the region in 1863.
QWhich future U.S. president was shaped directly by Tennessee's secession — and how did he end up on Lincoln's ticket?
Andrew Johnson, a Democratic senator from Greeneville in East Tennessee, refused to leave the Senate when Tennessee seceded — the only senator from a seceding state to hold his seat. Lincoln recognized the political value of a Southern Unionist Democrat and appointed him military governor of Tennessee after Nashville fell in February 1862. Johnson governed under martial law, overseeing the abolition of slavery in the state with uncertain legal authority. Two years later, Lincoln chose him as his 1864 running mate specifically to appeal to War Democrats and border-state voters. When Lincoln was shot on April 14, 1865, Johnson was immediately sworn in as president.
